October statement from his family on his conversion while in a cell, which they call voluntary: http://fox59.com/2014/10/05/kassig-family-release-new-statement-on-sons-conversion-to-islam/
Who the heck does this, goes to Lebanon on Spring Break? Something was seriously wrong, even before he was taken hostage and murdered.
“Like many people his age, our son had spent his late teens and early 20s searching for his place in the world. His sojourn included a brief time in the U.S. military, but upon returning home he felt called to be a peacemaker. He traveled to Lebanon in 2012 while on spring break from college, and later returned to work there as a medic and humanitarian worker. As he told us in a letter in 2012, ‘The truth is sometimes I really think I would like to do something else, but at the end of the day this work is really the only thing that I have found that gives my life both meaning and direction.’”